In ancient times, until the XIII century, Russian lands, as state territories, were divided into lands, volosts, regions, and then into volosts, counties, provinces.
Volost
Lands were organized under the leadership of the trading cities of Russia. History knows Kyiv, Chernigov, Pereyaslav and many other lands. Volosts are principalities that were constantly divided and redistributed in ancient times. During the time of Kievan Rus, efforts were made to unite these principalities into one power.
What is a parish? This is the smallest administrative-territorial unit in the section that existed in the old days. It had the same meaning as the region. The volost or region sometimes coincided with the borders of the land, if this land was the possession of one prince. And usually the parish was part of the land. For example, the land of Kyiv had different volosts, which were named like small towns.
In Church Slavonic, volosts were sometimes called authorities. The name "power" had a political concept, which meant the right to own. And the concept of a volost meant a territory. The region comes from the word "obvlast" and means the lands to which this power extends. These terms had the following meanings: power denoted the space of possession, and the area - the right of possession. As, for example, it was said in the Gospel of John - "give them a region to be a child of God." Since 1861, volosts have been formed for all types of peasants, if I may say so.
Destiny
In Ancient Russia, all lands were divided into counties, camps, and those, in turn, into roads, volosts, hundreds, and so on. Allotments were called parts of the land, which were divided among the children. Destiny - from the word to give (to divide). The father divided his possessions and gave them to his children. This is the share that went to each heir.
Destinies, in turn, were subdivided into counties. The district was called the administrative-judicial district. Counties were not only near cities, but also near villages, if the judicial administration was in these villages. In other, more understandable words, the district was called the judicial and administrative power in the village. Already then districts in a city or village began to be called a county. Simply put, a county is a district. The administrator collected alms for this district three times a year. This was also done in the volost (meaning the collection of taxes).
King
All Russian land was divided into Little Russia and Great Russia. These names were the result of revolutions that took place in the XII-XIII centuries regarding the Russian population. The entire right side of the Dnieper began to be called Little Russia, and the left side up to the Volga - Big Russia. The supreme power had such titles - prince, grand duke, grand duke of all Russia, sovereign-tsar. The prince comes from the German words konung, kuning, this word was the name of the representative of the supreme power in the Slavic lands.
The Prince of Kyiv was called the Grand Duke. After all, there were princes of different regional cities. Moscow sovereigns took the title of tsar as their name. This word comes from a shortened form of the word "Caesar". It came from writing "Caesar" in Old Church Slavonic.
Under the king understood the highest power from the power of local sovereigns. During the reign of Russia by the Tatar Horde, the Tatar rulers were called tsars, and then, after the fall of the Byzantine and Roman empires, the rulers of Russia took a household name - the king.
The title of king was then understood as the Roman emperor. The king was understood as an independent owner of the land, who did not pay tribute to anyone, did not give an account of anything. In other words, an autocrat who does not depend on someone else's power.
Titles
If we summarize the scheme of development of power in Russia, we can consider such titles of this very power. The prince was called the leader of an armed detachment who guarded Russia and received a reward for this - food. It was a position, in fact, hired. But the Grand Duke of Kyiv is no longer a hired person, but a representative of the family that owns this land. And finally, the sovereign-tsar is the master of the Russian land and the senior representative of all the sovereigns of Russia, and the supreme ruler.
Need
In ancient times, it so happened that the unification of peasants, the main tax payers, into administrative districts took place on the basis of state taxes. This is the essence of the concept of what a parish is.
The population of the country was united intomills and volosts. Such associations were managed by governors and volostels, who represented the central government bodies locally. But, in addition, in each volost it had its own organs of secular government. The secular leadership was carried out through gatherings and councils. Each volost council had a headman or sotsky with payers who monitored the regular payment of taxes and duties. Such an office of secular self-government de alt with the affairs of the land economy of each volost or camp. The duties of the local headman included monitoring the proper payment of taxes and taxes, assigning free land plots to new settlers, petitioning the central government for the needs of their volost, rewarding peasants with benefits, distributing taxes among all those who could not pay or left the volost. And I had to pay back to back before the new census.
Hard Times
Such a concept as a parish, gradually, with the development of land ownership, began to die. Some classes of the population began to beg the sovereign for various benefits. They could not be judged, except for serious criminal cases, and they themselves could judge their peasants. The possessions of such a landowner with all his villages left the volost. Such counties and volosts were considered a special judicial-administrative district. But still, regardless of which settlements were called volosts, it was important that the unification into volosts and camps still took place on the basis of the collection of various taxes and taxes. Headmen or other officials came to elected or appointed posts, and theythey were mainly engaged in the registration of all tax weavers, and along the way they did the court and other cases in the territory entrusted to them.
The times of Peter I
Already in the time of Peter I, the lands were divided into provinces, provinces - into counties, and already counties - into volosts, the most unified administrative division. For the first time in Russia, a unified system of volost-uyezd-province was formed at that time. And in the case of the peasants who belonged to the landlords, the place of the volosts was occupied by the landowners' estates. The volost was formed from nearby rural communities. It was not more than 20 miles long. Rural communities also had their own self-government. A village headman, a tax collector, was also elected, who also de alt with the court in these territories.
Famous parish
One of the most famous, according to the film "Ivan Vasilyevich changes his profession", was the Kemsky volost. The film said that the Swedish king wanted to get this parish from Ivan the Terrible. It is located in the Kem River basin, on the shores of the White Sea. The center of the volost was the town of Kem. Once the Kemsky volost was the possession of Martha Boretskaya, who was considered the wife of the posadnik of Veliky Novgorod. Later, she donated this volost to the Solovetsky Monastery. At different times, Finns and Swedes made devastating raids on the parish. But still, the Solovetsky Monastery, having taken possession of it, managed to build here a large prison for those times and made it at the same time a fortress that sheltered the population from enemy raids.
If we summarize everything that we have considered in this article, namely the meaning of the word "parish", we can say with a clear conscience that the division of the country into administrative territories was caused, firstly, by the possession of these lands, and secondly, by the fact that taxes and dues had to be collected on these lands. Therefore, in order to facilitate this matter, they divided the land into different volosts. In them, as in the smallest administrative associations, taxes were withdrawn from the peasants. Volosts are, in fact, forced associations of the population into communities based on local differences.
